O yeah you can laugh
At what you think is my naiveté,
All this wishing desiring hoping,
These few shreds of faith,
Faith in something vaguely reassuring.

O yeah I wanna be reassured all right
Cause death comes no matter what you think,
No matter what you plan or decide,
No matter what kind of deal you think you’ve made,
Death comes and rips you loose from this life
Without any consideration at all.

O yeah I’ve gotta believe there’s a chance
That I can rise above all the despair,
All this darkness always pushing,
Pushing against something so simple,
So simple as a sunny disposition.

O yeah I’ve seen ‘em,
People who take life’s knocks
And still smile as an unconscious reflex,
Something maybe about the way they were raised,
Something genetic,
Something maybe about luck.

Whatever it is I want a piece of that
And I don’t care how unsophisticated I look
Or how naïve you think I am.
I just don’t care
Because death comes no matter what you think
And I just gotta get rid of this fear
While I still have a chance.

When my great-grandfather was young,
Growing up in a small farming town,
He was needed.
His labor was needed.
Every able-bodied citizen was needed,
And by their labors, the towns grew into cities,
And the cities became a country.

Each morning they were called,
Called to a hundred,
A thousand different employments.

Each morning I am not called.
My labor is not needed.

I imagine my great-grandfather
Choosing an occupation,
Answering the call,
Fulfilling a need,
Building a life,
A city,
A country.

He would not understand this aimless life I lead.
He would not know me.

Two sun-colored sulfur butterflies soar and dive,
Their movements mirrored in amorous acrobatics.
Or is it combat?

I’d like to think it’s passion,
Passion made urgent by the fading light.
These rice-paper-winged creatures,
In terpsichorean surrender to the fleeting moment,
One last ecstasy before everything changes.

If he only knew
How hard she worked to be pretty for him,
Eagerly awaiting his arrival each morning,
Watching the parking lot through the office window,
Then walking down the hall for nothing in particular
So he would see her when he walked in,
See her long, ebony hair
Falling in graceful curls and waves over her shoulders
Across her finely sculpted collarbones,
See her all the way down
To her exquisitely proportioned pale pink toes.

It was meant to be.

She’d been on his busy, distracted mind
More and more lately,
When this morning she walked down the hall
Blurring past busy cubicles,
Fast enough to ripple her diaphanous plum and apricot dress
Just as he entered the office,
Struck by this sudden vision,
This annunciation.

Awakened by her focused, concentrated beauty
Washing over him like a wave,
He speaks,
And it all begins.

“There is no joy,”
The older man says,
Revealing his casual observation
To his young younger female companion,
Sitting a little too close
In a restaurant booth,
Thinking I will not hear
My condemnation
As I sit nearby,
After a difficult day,
Having a little sustenance
With my wife.

Married thirty years
We have endured many joyless days,
Endured suffering,
Anger
And despair.

The young younger female companion,
Pulled even closer,
Looks into the depths of his wrinkles,
Measures the sag of his neck
And ponders the arrangement.
He smells like her father.

His haphazardly shaved face is rough
And scratches her cheek.
Her body stiffens.
She has visions of long hospital hallways,
A tube in his nose,
A stainless steel tray filled with medicine bottles.

“You can see it in the eyes,”
He says with wine-induced indiscretion,
“No joy,”
Sure that he has everything,
At last.

It was Sunday,
And many millions
Living in the most powerful nation on Earth
Spent most of the day
Watching the big football game on television,
Cheering,
Moaning,
Screaming at the electronic moving pictures of football players
Running back and forth and sideways,
Trying desperately,
Valiantly to get hold of the football
And take it to one end,
Or another,
Of the green plastic space
Some still call a field.

Five bees drowning in a swimming pool,
Caught by a reflection,
A sparkling promise of pollen,
Waterlogged.

Once they touch down the mirage disappears
And they are caught,
Their sodden wings can no longer fly.

Seeing tiny ripples in the water from their struggles
I take my net and lift them out
Onto concrete warmed by the morning sun.

Two are not moving,
But the other three have begun grooming,
Abdomen and thorax,
With every available leg,
Diligently scraping off water.

One is still so exhausted
He cannot keep his balance and tumbles over
From the disproportionate weight of water
Still clinging to one side of his body.

With a leaf stem I help restore his balance
So his meticulous grooming can continue,
So the sun can dry his cellophane wings.

The strongest of the three revs up his wings in a blur
Moving in short bursts across the cement,
His legs still giving support,
Testing.
Then he lifts into the air,
Restored.

Perhaps the other two were in the water longer,
For it takes more grooming and warming
Until they too are free from the terrible gravity of the ground.

It’s hard to fathom the personality of a garden bee,
Why the last two lingered a while.
Perhaps they are older,
More shaken by the sight of their two dead comrades
Lying on their backs,
Legs angled toward heaven,
Without purpose.

Why?
They might wonder,
If they were anything at all like you and me.
Why did God spare only three?

Or do they know what we know,
That when it comes to saving lives,
Some will stay,
Some will go.

Heaven is a difficult place,
So full of strife and tragedy,
At times I forget where I am,
Here in this place of extremes,
Of contrast,
Where kindness is born of cruelty,
Where love is born of fear,
Where enlightenment is born of ignorance,
Where all possibilities exist,
Darkness and light being what they are.

Why am I not a god to these cats?
They sit, long-pawed on my driveway
As I approach in the fearsome monster of steel,
Growling and hissing.
But they watch my advance with disinterest,
Half-closed eyes revealing scant concern.
They are used to my comings and goings
And will not move until the last possible moment,
When a tire threatens to brush a whisker,
When I race the engine to give them a start.
They are becoming accustomed to these things as well.

I step from the roughly idling four-door sedan
And pull open the great wall of aluminum garage door,
Letting it fly upward and crash against the frame.
A few furry heads turn in slumberous response,
Then mechanically turn away.
O what will roust them from this languor?

It is the clack and pop of punctured metal,
The grinding drone of the kitchen can opener
That does the trick.
In an instant they have gathered,
A felonious mob at the back-door stoop,
Meowing in feigned, pitiful supplication,
And God will walk among them once more.

How difficult it must be
For the impoverished to understand
Our disappointment with material wealth,
Our disaffected boredom with affluence,
Our disillusioned fear
That despite having assembled the contents,
This particular heaven we’ve made contains no joy.

How difficult it must be
For the impoverished to understand
That because this particular heaven we’ve made is without joy,
We must therefore conclude that joy is impossible.

How difficult it must be
For the impoverished to understand
That despite all we own,
For some inaccessible reason,
In this time,
In this place,
In this life,
Joy is denied.

When the change comes,
I watch the rise and fall of your chest
And feel your breath within me.

When it comes,
You run your fingers through your hair
And my fingers tremble,
Your hand becomes my hand.
You reach under the neck of your blouse
To scratch your shoulder
And I feel the bone
Beneath your skin.

When it comes,
You move restlessly in your chair,
Propping elbows on knees,
Stretching the contours of your back
And I embrace you.
I feel the tension of your ribs
Pressing against mine,
Though I sit across the room
And do not know your name.

When it comes,
I cannot stop you from leaving this room
Where I am required to stay
And listen to the words of unimportant people
Who are old and ugly
And starved for love,
Like me.